


The Wedding of Black Widow

by HoneySempai



Series: A Cord of Three Strands [10]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/F, F/M, Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Polyamory, Self-Harm, Weddings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-02
Updated: 2016-01-06
Packaged: 2018-04-12 10:16:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4475585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HoneySempai/pseuds/HoneySempai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura proposes. Natasha considers. Clint is a bit befuddled by it all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prolouge

"It'll be fun! We can invite your work friends."

"Tony didn't even believe I could be married to _you_ ," Clint says, looking at her with exasperated eyes over a cup of coffee. "Just imagine the aneurysm if he gets an invitation from the Bartons _and_ Romanov to their...what, commitment ceremony?"

"Admittedly, that might be funny," Natasha quips, her knee bouncing up and down to keep Nat--until the kid grows up and definitively announces itself to be Nathaniel or Natasha, "Nat" the child remains to her mind--entertained and more importantly, quiet.

"Come on, Clint," Laura said, her lashes practically caressing the air as she slowly batted her eyes. "We're all together again. We ought to celebrate."

Natasha shifts in her seat.

"We can keep it small," Laura continues, sweeping through the kitchen to pour glasses of juice. "Just the Avengers Initiative, and their dates. We could have it right here. Wouldn't it be funny if Nick officiated?"

"The Right Reverend Fury? You can't be serious. What would he read out of, the Gospel According to Some Badass Mother Fucker?"

"Well, it's not a legal wedding; he wouldn't have to get ordained."

"He's not a stand-in-front-of-a-crowd, say-a-few-nice-words kinda guy, Laur."

"Stuff and nonsense. I've heard those speeches of his. He's second only to Steve in the eloquence department. He'll be a great officiant. Or maybe we can ask Steve!"

"Wait a minute, we haven't agreed to this yet."

"Well I've cast my vote for yes, obviously. What do you think, Nat? You wanna do this?"

Natasha had drifted. She snaps her head up, to look Laura in the eyes, and from out of their depths she reads _"I'll understand if you don't"_. She glances at Clint, who offers her the same.

She takes a breath, and she opens her mouth.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am absolutely not up on my comic books lore. Any Marvel stories I'm familiar with are from TV shows (mainly 90s cartoons) and the MCU. While Wikipedia is a blessed thing and I'll be incorporating bits and pieces of that research, I consider the MCU to be its on canon and don't consider myself beholden to anything presented in a different Marvel canon.

Hawkeye made a different call when Laura was five months pregnant for the first time.

Laura might have yelled at Clint for bringing home an enemy agent if Natasha hadn't been nursing two broken ankles, one broken leg, a sprained wrist, a lip split in three places, a gunshot wound to the side, several burns, and the aftermath of a concussion at the time.

"Tell me she at least got a few x-rays."

"She got a few x-rays, Laura."

"Are you lying to me?"

"Right hand up to Jesus, I am not lying to you."

"Because I know the brilliant way you guys handle injuries."

"I got a few x-rays," Natasha said suddenly, woodenly, from the couch; her eyes stared straight ahead. It was the first thing Natasha said since Clint helped her in the house--the first thing Natasha had said all day. 

"She won't be talking much," Clint explained, once they had defected to the kitchen. "It's more than just...what you can see."

"Did she get a head injury?"

"She did have a pretty bad blow to the head this time around and the painkillers she's on are something else. So I wouldn't trust...no, I wouldn't rely on anything she says, okay? She may or may not be _actively_ trying to lie to you, but it's a habit for her, she's a spy."

Clint has a _tell_ for when he doesn't want to let Laura in on something: his eyes grow a little wider, creating the same crease in his brow every time. It showed up a lot during Laura's pregnancies. Laura has her own _tell_ for when she knows this and is insisting that he do it anyway: she crosses her arms, cocks her head, and purses her lower lip to the side.

He sighed, took her by the arms, and guided her into a chair. "There's this organization called the Red Room," he said, sitting opposite her. "This woman--Natasha--is a..."graduate" of it. It's sort of a training school for assassin-spy-femme fatales."

"So there are more like her? Are they going to come looking for her?"

Clint shook his head. "There's only one graduate at a time. They make sure of that."

Laura's seen and heard a lot of things since a SHIELD Wife, but that made her drop the spoon she'd left on the table from breakfast and had been toying with since he started talking.

"So...she killed her...killed her peers?"

"She might have. Or _they_ might have. Probably a mix of both. We're not sure."

" _Jesus_." Laura's hand flew to her mouth, and then pushed back her hair. "How do you do that to a kid and have them turn out functioning?"

Not for the first time Clint felt a tug at the corners of his mouth; the appreciative smile born of having a wife ruled by compassion more than fear. "You don't. Not to a kid with a normal brain. So there's been a lot of things...hypnosis, drugs...probably some other stuff."

"They wanted to implant false memories."

Clint nodded. "Plus she's had so many cover stories over the years. With the head injury she got this time, and the drugs we've got her on...it's probably all starting to bleed together. So she's gonna be a bit less than lucid for awhile. That's why we're hiding her here. She's not a danger to you in her current state."

Laura inhaled deeply; sighed heavily. "Are you sticking around too?"

"Of course." He slid a hand across the table, to grasp and then run his fingers over her wrist. "I was gonna request off soon, anyway." Counter-intuitively enough SHIELD had a generous parental leave policy. Kids distracted agents, and distracted agents were useless, and often killed in short order besides.

"Water!"

The cracked-dry-sand cry from the living room jerked Clint's hand back and nearly made Laura jump to her feet.

"She's probably telling the whole truth about that..." Clint muttered, pushing back his chair and going to the fridge. "Spoke too soon," he reported to Laura, when he went to give Natasha the glass he had filled, and she had lain down, dragged their couch blanket over her, and fallen asleep.

First mishap notwithstanding, Laura and Clint soon learned that any requests for physical or material needs to be met tended to be true. At first it was mainly barked order-pleas; as she needed the painkillers less and less, they were replaced by complete sentences. By the time Laura was six-months-showing Natasha had graduated from "complete" to "complex", although regardless of the capability, she still wasn't saying much.

"Hold this for me?" Laura asked once, plopping a skein of yarn in Natasha's lap as she herself plopped down onto the sofa. She was met with silence, which she expected. "I think if I start now and work nonstop, I could have another blanket done before the baby shows up." This time she received a slight nod, but with a certain blankness behind it; an acknowledgement of fact more than a genuine reaction. "Do you like babies, Nat?"

This at last seemed to catch her off-guard, if the way she leaned back into the couch was any indication.

"Babies are fine."

"You sure?" Laura was smiling as she tied the end piece of her yarn around her crochet needle. "That didn't sound too convincing."

"I don't spend much time with them."

_"I would be very careful, Mr. Drakoff. Your little girl is awfully cute. It would be a shame if something happened to her."_

_"Oh my goodness, she's so precious! I didn't know you had a little one, Natalie! What's her name? How old is she?"_

Natasha put a few fingers to her temple.

"I guess not," Laura said, with a nod. "I was just curious."

"I like babies. I have one."

Laura paused mid-stitch and tried not to move suddenly or quickly. From the corner of her eye, she saw Natasha's expression, a mix of blank and confused and maternally proud.

"Her name is Sonia. She's two months old."

Laura made an ambiguous noise and returned to her crochet. She felt a few beats of her heart and thought about the hydroxyzine she had in her purse upstairs. Blessedly, Natasha furrowed her brow, and didn't say anything more.

"Does she have a child, Clint?" Laura asked later that night, when they were busy making dinner.

"No." Clint put down the plates he had been attempting to set the table with. His _tell_ came back, and when she went to him he stopped her in her tracks to put his hands on her belly, and his forehead to hers. This time Laura didn't push.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hydroxyzine is basically a stronger version of Benadryl and is prescribed for anxiety.


	3. Chapter 3

Sometimes during those first few weeks Laura would wake up to a cold bed. Clint is a light sleeper, so it didn't entirely surprise her, but something felt off about these early-morning disappearing acts, mainly because she couldn't hear any far-off sounds of him "remodeling" the house.

After the third or fourth time Laura decided to investigate. She was quiet as she slipped out of bed and padded down the hall, but Clint knew where she was by the time she hit the stairs. The creaky step--the thing she had actually asked him to fix, but he had yet to get around to--gave her away.

Clint sat in the chair opposite the couch, parallel to the TV, his chin cupped in his hands, watching.

"You two okay?" Laura asked, softly, with a fondly sarcastic smile.

"Heard her crying," Clint answered, and up close Laura could see his eyes were wide and dry from tiredness.

"What happened?"

"Don't know. She didn't wake up."

"Sorry I didn't either." Pregnancy had made Laura a very heavy sleeper. Even the alarm clock placed directly next to her head sometimes didn't rouse her from her sleep.

Clint wordlessly reached out, snaking a hand around her waist, and pulled her close to him. She crouched, half-sitting on his leg, and surveyed the little kingdom Clint had appointed himself sentinel of. If it weren't for the slightly dark-damp spots on the pillow Laura would never have guessed Natasha had done any crying at all; her sleeping face was not serene, exactly, but the scowl seemed like it belonged there at least.

"She's very beautiful," Laura said. The rising sun, filtering in through the window, fell on the side of Natasha's face, giving her otherwise pallid skin a warm glow, and illuminating the red-orange of her hair so that it shone like polished citrine.

"Yeah," Clint said, with a bit of a laugh. "That's part of her MO. That's why they call her the Black Widow. She'll seduce you, get what she needs, and then..." He made a slashing motion against his throat.

"Oh, but it's sad when a love affair dies," Laura sang softly, earning her a strong snuggle from the side of Clint's head. "Did she seduce you? Is that how you met?"

" _Laur_ ," Clint huffed.

"No, no, I want to know. Did she lay the charm on ol' Hawkeye, hmm? Sidled her lithe, feminine frame up against your chest? Did she flip her curly auburn locks and bat those beautiful eyes of hers?"

"Jesus, did she seduce _you_?"

"Mm, I could be seduced by her, I think." She grinned, earning herself another slight shove. The force of it, however mild, caused her to lose her balance, and her foot came down heavily on the floor when it caught her.

Laura missed the part between Natasha's eyes flying open and Natasha ending up sprawled on the floor, but in the moment when Clint yelped "Shit!" and slid out from under Laura's weight she surmised that the noise had startled Natasha and she had tried to confront it, forgetting her busted legs.

"It's okay, all clear, it's all clear, Natasha," Clint said, taking the wide-eyed, panting woman by the arm.

"I'm so sorry, that was my fault," Laura said, sinking to her knees beside her husband and Natasha. "Nothing's wrong; you're safe. All clear. All...all green."

"I got it," Natasha said, in a flash of defensiveness hitherto unseen by Clint and Laura. "All clear," she continued, in a low voice that seemed contrite for its previous sass.

It took some finagling on Clint's part to get Natasha off the floor, finally culminating in him lifting her almost bridal-style (she lay stomach-down in his arms rather than properly on her back) and setting her back on the couch. It wasn't quite as Herculean an effort to get Laura up, but he was nonetheless cracking jokes about _Do I even lift_ by the time he got Laura settled on the couch as well.

"How bad are you hurting?" Clint asked, sweeping Natasha with his gaze.

"Not at all."

"I'm gonna call Fury. See about how we can get a refill on your pain meds."

"That's really not necessary."

Clint arched an eyebrow in Natasha's direction. She glared back for a few seconds, before averting her gaze to glare at the pillow instead.

"Be right back," Clint said, with a covert sense of triumph only Laura would notice, and disappeared into the kitchen.

"Um...I'm really sorry, Natasha," Laura said after a few seconds of her hands fidgeting in her lap; she ended that, and punctuated her apology, by lying a hand on Natasha's back. "That was totally my fault."

"Forget it."

"Forgotten," Laura said immediately, with a nervous laugh and an equally nervous drumming of her fingertips against Natasha's back. After a moment, the drumming turned into scritching; the movement caught some of Natasha's hair. Before the idea had fully materialized in Laura's brain, the light tugging that this movement had created had turned into a sort of petting. When Natasha didn't move to indicate displeasure, Laura's hand straightened out and reached up, to start at the crown and run all the way down the length of the other woman's tresses.

She was like a cat, Laura thought. All sleek and cool elegance, with an undertone of danger, until spooked, of course. It made sense to stroke her hair like one would a housecat's fur.

"Is this okay, Natasha?" Laura asked, gently.

"It feels nice," Natasha said, half-into the pillow. Normally when she was petted like this it was by a man who didn't yet know they had seconds left.

Laura hummed and then scritched the back of Natasha's skull, bunching her hair in between her fingers. Then, struck by some sudden muse, she laid both her hands on Natasha's shoulders, and gently pinched them with her palms.

If she blushed at Natasha's little moan, well, it was what it was. It certainly didn't stop her from working her thumbs over the knots in Natasha's shoulders, or sliding them up the back of Natasha's neck. She was an old pro at this, having done similar massages for Clint from even before he joined SHIELD. His favorite part was when she kneaded the space between his shoulder blades with her knuckles, and judging by the way Natasha shifted underneath his ministrations, she was a fan, as well.

"Mrs. Barton, are _you_ trying to seduce _me_?"

Laura's hands arrested their movement. "You heard that?"

"I'm a light sleeper."

"Oh, Natasha I'm...I'm sorry if that offended you, I was just joking around with Clint..."

She trailed off when Natasha turned her head, to let Laura see her face. It took a moment to parse Natasha's expression, for her smile was very small; Laura returned it with one of her own once she figured out that Natasha was playing with her.

"You're a little shit, aren't you?"

"There is a distinct possibility," Natasha deadpanned, and Laura barked out a laugh.

"What's so funny?" Clint called from the other room.

"Nat's a little shit!" Laura called back.

"Well, hell, I coulda told you that. You two want coffee?"

"Do you?" Laura asked, glancing at Natasha. Natasha shrugged, in a way that was slightly more affirmative than neutral. "Yeah, we'll have coffee! And waffles!"

"Oh come o--now who's the little shit?"

"You, because you're complaining about making waffles for your pregnant wife and an injured woman."

"You're lucky I love you."

"Yes, we are," Laura replied, this time letting her voice drip in flirtatious affection.

"He doesn't love _me_ ," Natasha said, cocking an eyebrow at Laura.

"He will."

Natasha raised her other eyebrow. It crossed Laura's mind to try to retract or diminish the statement, and she opened her mouth to do so.

"He will," she said again, instead.


	4. Chapter 4

Fury didn't only see to it that Natasha got her medication refill; he personally showed up to deliver it, along with a job offer.

"I'm next to useless to you right now, and I'm still an enemy agent," Natasha said.

"Temporarily."

"Which?"

"Both. Ms. Romanov, I'm pretty sure you realize you're not the first person we've flipped. You're not even the first person that we've flipped who has a...colorful, shall we say, track record."

"Are you that hard up for talent?" Natasha smirked, but her eyes were hard.

"No, in fact. There are about a dozen other people with your exact skillset that are a mere phone call away, if they're not already on my payroll."

"So why do you want me?"

"Because this one took a shine to you." Fury jerked a thumb in Clint's direction. "And his judgment hasn't failed me yet."

Natasha assessed him coolly. "Your psychological manipulation is rather transparent."

"As is yours."

He left without an answer. Natasha both resented and respected his nonetheless confident stride out the Bartons' front door.

"Tea?" Laura asked brightly, after she had closed the door behind Fury. He had inquired about the pregnancy, and given her a small smile that she was almost 100% sure was genuine when she announced that everything seemed to be going well. Any such exchange nowadays left her feeling pretty chipper. "Actually, I'll make lunch."

She left Clint in the living room with Natasha, sitting in the same chair as when he kept watch over her early mornings.

"You looking to cheat on your wife, Barton?"

"I'm sorry?"

"She's pregnant. Probably uncomfortable and not particularly enthusiastic about the thought of sex. You don't want to think of yourself as a bad guy. You don't push. You don't even mention it. But you're frustrated. Intensely so."

Clint crossed his arms. "Continue."

"Your frustration leads you to make an irrational decision when confronted with an enemy. She's attractive. She's injured. If you take her home and care for her, she'll be in your debt. Power over the helpless is a mighty aphrodisiac. And perhaps she won't be..."lucid enough"...to turn you down."

"Why would I get my boss involved?"

"The reasons are manifold. You cover your tracks by presenting her as a case to be flipped. You lose an enemy if she takes you up on your job offer. And, most saliently, she'll be even more indebted to you if you help her start over in life."

Clint fixed her with a piercing look such as she thought that it, and not any particular skill at aiming, might be why he was called Hawkeye.

"Are you trying to wrangle a confession, or is this a first attempt at gaslighting?"

She shrugged.

"It's a pretty brilliant theory either way, but fortunately it's incorrect. Firstly, I have an active sex life. _With_ my wife. Secondly, if I were the type of douche to try to get debt sex out of an enemy, I'd do it with someone a little less likely to slit my throat in the middle of it."

"I don't believe you." She wasn't sure of that.

"Well, maybe you'll believe that Fury would have me in thumbscrews if I jeopardized a mission just so I could chase tail."

That she definitely could believe, but she made no indication of the fact.

"And he'd be able to tell. Immediately." He stood up; stretched. "Y'know, Ms. Romanov, believing the worst about people isn't good for your health."

"And highly addictive painkillers are?"

"...All right, touche. But." He picked up the bottle Fury had left, brandished it aloft, and set it back down. "No one's shoving them down your throat here."

"You were sure insistent that I get them."

"I wanted you to _have_ them. Whether you take them or not is up to you, but you need the resources before you can make a real choice."

"And why, exactly, do you care about my choices?"

 _"Because I figure anyone who loved a baby that much can't be irredeemable,"_ he opened his mouth to say, before he thought better of it. Laura chose that time to hipcheck the door open, anyway.

"You're not allergic to peanut butter, right?" Laura asked brightly. "Cause I can make you bologna and cheese again if you are. Just thought you'd want something different."

"I'm not allergic to anything," Natasha said.

"Ok, good. Lunch in one minute!" She disappeared back into the kitchen.

"See, how could anyone cheat on that?" Clint asked, with a small smile.

"People have done worse."

"Granted, but." He fixed her with a gaze no less intense than before, but much softer. "People have done better, too."

"And you think I'll "do better" with SHIELD?"

"Well, yeah. That's why I brought you here. And I think, at the very least, SHIELD will do _you_ better."

Laura hipchecked the door open again, this time bearing a tray with three sandwiches and three glasses of iced tea.

"In fact, I think it already has."


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: self-harm and mentions of suicidal ideation

"How do you go twenty some-odd years and _not figure out that you're allergic to peanuts?_ "

Natasha shrugged tightly as Laura shoved two capsules of Benadryl in her newly splotchy, red face with one hand, a cup of water held in the other. "I suppose I never had them," she said, after she had dutifully washed down the antihistamine.

"I still think we should take you to the hospital."

"Why?" Clint asked. "It's obviously not life-threatening."

"Well it could _become_ life-threatening!" Laura yelped.

"Sweetheart, do you want to explain the state she's in to an ER doctor?" Clint asked, his gaze gently running up and down Natasha's still rather battered body.

"She'll be in a worse state when she asphyxiates!"

"She's not going to asphyxiate; it would have already happened."

"Is this what you're going to be like when the baby's born?"

"What, calm? Rational?"

"Flippant!"

"I'm not being flippant! She had a mild reaction. You gave her Benadryl. We're here to make sure it doesn't get worse. We can't be running the baby to the ER every time the kid gets a sniffle."

"An allergic reaction is not a sniffle!"

"Sometimes it is," Natasha piped up, the tiniest hint of annoyance in her tone.

"You," Laura whirled around to jab her finger at Natasha, "you hush."

"Actually, _shouldn't_ I have some say in whether or not I go to a hospital?" The hint of annoyance turned into a full-blown flavor.

"Nat, it really isn't safe for you to leave the house until you can fend for yourself," Clint said.

"At which point you'll, what, release me back into the wild? I haven't agreed to join your band of merry men yet, Robin Hood. I don't have to go along with your game plan for my rehabilitation."

"Come on, Nat, don't be a child."

"I am _not_ your child."

"Well, you are _someone's_ child," Laura snapped. "And as I am the only mother in the room, I am going to look after you in your actual parents' place. Clint, you have a point." She turned on her husband, briefly catching the stunned look on Natasha's face. "I forgot about that."

"Yeah, we don't know who's out looking for her, and where they are," Clint said, a little slower, his gaze hard. "I'd rather not involve a bunch of doctors and nurses if someone shows up."

Natasha stiffened under his words. It took him a moment to realize why.

"Oh shit, Nat, I--"

"Shut the hell up."

" _Natasha_ \--" Laura started.

"Laur." Clint put a hand on his wife's arm; when she looked at him he shook his head. Laura chewed on her bottom lip, and looked back at Natasha, but instead of her scowling face Laura was greeted with a shock of red hair, somehow as cold and closed-off as it had been warm and strangely inviting just a few hours ago.

"...All right," Laura said, after no one moved or spoke for several seconds. "I guess...I'll just keep an eye out, in case something happens."

"Sounds like a plan," Clint said, a little thickly, and shifted uncomfortably on his feet. "Ahh~...I should probably go fix that...thing I was talking about yesterday."

"Yeah," Laura said, blinking. "I'll...go get my crochet and sit here. If you don't mind, Nat."

No answer. Clint squeezed Laura's arm and swayed, taking several seconds to convince himself to move. Laura gave him a grimace-like smile and leaned against his arm, silently giving him permission to stay put as she left the room to find her project first.

"Nat, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that," Clint said, once he thought Laura would be safely out of earshot.

Again, no answer. Clint held his breath for a moment, and then released it when Natasha made no sign that she would be giving up her radio silence. He swayed again, and then moved, bending down to gather the dishes that had been left on the coffee table, abandoned when Laura noticed that Natasha's face had begun breaking out in a rash; the plates and cups clinked against each other with almost deafening noise as he tried to stack them in such a way that they wouldn't fall and shatter on the floor.

He made it to the kitchen door, had propped it open with his hip, before a thought struck him. Natasha felt him staring at her even though she refused to turn her head to confirm.

"Did you know you were allergic to peanuts, Nat?"

"If I were going to kill myself I'd do it with something that's gonna give me more than just an itchy throat," Natasha shot back through clenched teeth.

Clint squeezed the dishes between his fingers and pressed them close to his torso, suddenly feeling as though they were about to fall from his grasp. He jerked, involuntarily, towards going to her, towards escaping from her. After another handful of seconds he went back into the living room, depositing the dishes back onto the coffee table.

Natasha heard the pills rattle inside the bottle as Clint moved the painkillers out of her reach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the wait; the beginning of this chapter presented itself on a whim and consequently I stared at it for months without really knowing where I wanted to go with it.

**Author's Note:**

> [I made a Claurtasha playlist you should give it a listen](http://8tracks.com/honeysempai/honey-i-missed-you-a-claurtasha-playlist)


End file.
